1957 Southern 500
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 40 of 53 in the 1957 NASCAR Grand National Series season | |||
Layout of Darlington Raceway
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| Date | September 2, 1957 | ||
| Location | Darlington Raceway, Darlington, South Carolina | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 1.375 mi (2.221 km) |
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| Distance | 400 laps, 500 mi (800 km) | ||
| Weather | Hot with temperatures reaching up to 93.3 °F (34.1 °C); wind speed up to 8.9 miles per hour (14.3 km/h) | ||
| Average speed | 100.094 miles per hour (161.086 km/h) | ||
| Attendance | 75,000 | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Nichels Engineering | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Speedy Thompson | Speedy Thompson | |
| Laps | 210 | ||
| Winner | |||
| No. 46 | Speedy Thompson | Speedy Thompson | |
| Television in the United States | |||
| Network | WJMX (local AM radio) | ||
| Announcers | Local radio announcers | ||
The 1957 Southern 500, the eighth running of the event, was a NASCAR Grand National Series event that was held on September 2, 1957, at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina.
The race car drivers still had to commute to the races using the same stock cars that competed in a typical weekend's race through a policy of homologation (and under their own power). This policy was in effect until roughly 1975. By 1980, NASCAR had completely stopped tracking the year model of all the vehicles and most teams did not take stock cars to the track under their own power anymore.
Darlington Raceway, nicknamed by many NASCAR fans and drivers as "The Lady in Black" or "The Track Too Tough to Tame" and advertised as a "NASCAR Tradition", is a race track built for NASCAR racing located near Darlington, South Carolina. It is of a unique, somewhat egg-shaped design, an oval with the ends of very different configurations, a condition which supposedly arose from the proximity of one end of the track to a minnow pond the owner refused to relocate. This situation makes it very challenging for the crews to set up their cars' handling in a way that will be effective at both ends.
The track is a four-turn 1.366 miles (2.198 km) oval. The track's first two turns are banked at twenty-five degrees, while the final two turns are banked two degrees lower at twenty-three degrees. The front stretch (the location of the finish line) and the back stretch is banked at six degrees. Darlington Raceway can seat up to 60,000 people.
The event took five hours and one second to resolve itself on a paved oval track spanning 1.375 miles (2.213 km) for a total distance of 500.5 miles (805.5 km). Seventy-five thousand fans attended this live NASCAR racing event. The most notable crew chiefs that were attendance for this race were Jess Potter, Bud Moore, Shorty Johns and Ray Fox.
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